Hands on: Dolphin HD browser for Android is swimmingly good

Dolphin HD is a third-party Web browser for Android that offers some …

One of the strengths of Google's Android mobile operating system is its support for customization. Android enthusiasts can augment the capabilities of their Android device by replacing key components of the platform with superior third-party alternatives.

There are a growing number of really great third-party home screen implementations and Web browsers that users can install directly from the Android Market. Some of the popular Web browsers include Opera, Skyfire, Firefox, and Dolphin HD. We plan to write up a full comparison at some point in the future, but decided to start by giving you a close look at our favorite: Dolphin HD.

The Dolphin browser was originally created to bring multitouch capabilities like pinch-zooming to Android prior to Google's official inclusion of that feature in the platform's standard browser. Since then, the Dolphin developers have worked to differentiate their custom browser in a multitude of ways. The current incarnation of the program—which is called Dolphin HD—offers an outstanding user interface, a sophisticated gesture command system, an add-on framework, and extensive configurability.

The Dolphin HD Web browser

Dolphin HD is a WebKit-based browser that appears to use the platform's native HTML rendering component rather than its own engine. This means that it handles Web content approximately the same way as the default browser. Its distinguishing advantages all come from its user interface shell and advanced feature set.

Gestures

Dolphin HD's gesture system is well-implemented and highly configurable. To input a gesture, you first have to enter the gesture mode by tapping a translucent button in the bottom left corner of the screen. As you slide your thumb or finger over the screen to make the gesture, the software will show a yellow line that indicates the path. If the gesture is recognized, the program will perform the desired operation and then exit the gesture mode.

The gesture command input mode

There are a handful of preconfigured gestures that come with the program, but you can also add your own gestures. The gesture editor lets you trace out your own gesture and assign an action to it from a list. You can use gestures for refreshing, going back and forward in the current tab history, toggling fullscreen mode, bookmarking a page, closing the current tab, opening a new tab, or practically any other standard browser action. You can also create gestures that load a specific URL. For example, I created a custom gesture that will load Ars Technica when I draw a lowercase "a" on the screen.

Configuring gestures for Dolphin HD

User interface

Much like Firefox Mobile, Dolphin HD has sidebars that are accessible when you drag the page to the right or left. The left-hand sidebar displays your bookmarks, but you can also toggle it to show your recent history or most-visited sites. In the bookmarks view, you can tap the star to bookmark the page in the active tab. The right-hand sidebar provides access to add-ons, the add-on manager, and the browser's settings panel.

The browser's bookmark sidebar

The right-hand add-on sidebar

One of the best features of Dolphin HD is its integrated tab bar. You can see all of your open tabs in a horizontal row at the top of the window. You can drag this row to the left or right to see additional tabs. Dolphin HD's tab bar makes tab switching and management a lot easier than it is in the platform's standard browser. The visibility of the tabs also makes it easier to remember which tabs you have open. You can close the active tab by tapping its "X" icon and you can close an inactive tab by double-tapping it.

When you scroll down the page, the navigation bar and tabs will slide off the top of the screen so that they don't detract from space for viewing content. When you are in the middle of the page, you can quickly get those user interface elements back by hitting the menu button.

Dolphin HD obviously has a lot to offer for users who want a richer user interface, but it also caters to minimalists who don't like clutter and just want the interface to get out of their way. It has an excellent full-screen mode that hides everything that's not content, including Android's notification bar. In this mode, the user can tap the menu button to make all of the standard user interface elements temporarily reappear.

Full-screen mode shines most when it is used in conjunction with the gesture commands. You can access virtually all of the tab-management features through the gesture system and avoid having to flip out of full-screen mode.

Add-ons

Dolphin HD offers a built-in add-on system that allows users to install additional functionality. The add-ons are installed via the Android Market and can be managed from within the browser by tapping the puzzle piece icon in the right-hand sidebar. There aren't a lot of add-ons available yet, but the modest assortment that is presently available fills a lot of different needs. There are add-ons for adjusting page content, backing up bookmarks, sharing a URL on a Twitter, and generating a QR code of the current page.

Dolphin HD's list of featured add-ons

There are also add-ons for integrating with popular Web services such as Read It Later. I was particularly pleased to discover that LastPass offers a Dolphin HD add-on for its premium subscribers, making it possible to sync and auto-fill passwords. LastPass also has an Xmarks add-on for Dolphin HD, but it was quite limited and not as useful compared to the stand-alone Xmarks application.

Dolphin HD's add-on system appears to allow fairly robust interaction with page content and certain browser features, but it doesn't seem to allow deep customization of the user interface—that's one of the areas where Firefox still has a bit of an advantage. Most of the add-ons simply expose their features through buttons in the right-hand sidebar.

In addition to add-ons, Dolphin HD also has a simple theming system. The available themes all basically look like the standard black-and-green theme, except with a different highlighting color that replaces the green.

Settings

Dolphin HD has a comprehensive settings panel that can be accessed by clicking the gear icon in the right-hand sidebar. In addition to the standard browser settings that you would expect, it has a bunch of extras such as built-in support for user-agent spoofing, optional support for caching to the SD card instead of internal storage, a backup/restore feature, and an orientation lock. The user-agent spoofing is especially useful on larger devices like Samsung's Galaxy Tab, where you want to see the desktop version of Web sites by default.

Availability

Dolphin is available in several different flavors. The original version, which is simply called Dolphin, was built largely for Android 1.6 and is still maintained for the benefit of older devices that are running a version of Android prior to 2.0. Dolphin HD is the updated version that is intended for modern Android devices running Android 2.0 or later.

The developers recently introduced a new flavor called Dolphin Mini, which is designed for optimal performance and is also compatible with older versions of Android. Mini will eventually replace the classic Dolphin as the option for users who want a faster and lighter browsing experience or compatibility with legacy devices. Dolphin HD is currently the only variant of Dolphin that supports add-ons.

Dolphin HD is available from the Android Market at no cost. The free version has advertisements, but they are unobtrusive and rarely visible. The ad banner only seems to show up in the full bookmark manager; we haven't seen it anywhere else.

Conclusion

Dolphin HD is an outstanding browser that brings together an elegant user interface, robust feature set, good performance, and a useful add-on system. It also happens to have a much smaller disk footprint than some of the other alternative browsers because it uses the platform's standard rendering engine. After extensive testing, Dolphin HD definitely gets the nod as our favorite browser for Android. It's really great on phones and its unique advantages are even more compelling on larger devices like the Galaxy Tab.

I'm a big fan of Opera on the desktop. Their mobile browser is OK, I guess. But I downloaded Dolphin HD on the recommendations of my father, who has had his Incredible for a bit longer than me. I mostly agree with the assessment here. The performance is good; and certainly better than Opera's. I don't find any use for the gestures, however I suppose they may be useful to some people. I also don't personally have any use for any of the AddOns, though again it's always nice to have the option.

Also: The default browser has tabs? The fact that I have to ask that question means it's a poor design... (Though I'm really generally quite happy with it, in reality)

The interesting thing is - since Dolphin HD uses the built-in WebKit - there's nothing that would prevent it from being ported to iOS. Some of the UI conventions here are really interesting and unique - I'd love to try the drawers you can pull out from left and right.

Any idea how this would compare to something like iCab on iOS which shares the same kind of "expand on the built-in" philosophy?

Since I see Reddit in your bookmarks and your open tabs, I have to ask: how do you deal with the reddit mobile tracker thing. I am referring to the little bar in the upper left corner whenever you visit a link from Reddit mobile. It seems to break a lot of web pages for me.

I know that the mobile Firefox browser is still beta and slower in comparison, but not only does it have many of the features of Dolphin, but also a few more. The ability to synchronise open tabs, bookmarks, passwords, etc from your desktop browser is worth putting up with a few beta teething problems.

Dolphin Mini is ok, but it doesn't remove the Tab bar while scrolling. Also, I couldn't figure out home pages. It has a fairly different settings/interface than the other Dolphin browsers for whatever reason.

I'm not sure what it is about this browser that makes me stop using it. I might give it another shot though.

I've been testing out Dolphin HD, Miren, Opera, and Skyfire. I prefer Opera as my standard browser mostly because of turbo mode, which compresses content so it downloads and renders much faster than the standard browser (it's off by default), speed dial, and bookmark syncing with my desktop version of Opera. Still, it doesn't (yet) support Flash and seems to have issues with certain types of links like map and youtube links, where the normal browser will launch the correct app. Opera also seems to have issues with some sites that use redirects in the login process, like my bank.

I like Miren as a browser for quick operations like reading articles from the news widget because it's very simple and loads quickly.

The thing that bothers me the most about the stock browser is that if you have other browsers installed, every time you click a link it prompts you for the browser you want to use, like it's using the http action. That gets really annoying when you have multiple browsers installed.

At some suggestions in this thread I just tried Xscope 6 on my NC and it loads the Desktop version of websites WAY faster than Dolphin HD. The NPR website and the XDA forums are much more bearable to use now.

At some suggestions in this thread I just tried Xscope 6 on my NC and it loads the Desktop version of websites WAY faster than Dolphin HD. The NPR website and the XDA forums are much more bearable to use now.

I'll give it a shot once I get home. XDA and NPR both have apps, though ... so ...

One of my favorite things about Firefox on Android is that it supports simultaneous zooming and panning with the pinch gesture. This simple usability feature is ubiquitous on iOS, and i wish I could say the same for Android. It just recently made its way into Google Maps, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like Dolphin HD has it.

Sounds like a fine browser, but, of course, not the only one. Be sure to check out Maxthon Mobile, the Android version of Maxthon 3, which has more going for it than most of the big-name Windows browsers. Something going for both Maxthon 3 and Maxthon Mobile is that they share a cloud environment. That means that any new, changed, or resorted information about contacts, favorites, notes, passwords or other items made in Maxthon 3 are instantly reflected in Maxthon Mobile. And vice versa. Maxthon Mobile also has the luxury features--multiple tabs, DIY gestures, a wonderfully readable display, a fast, error-correcting downloader, and a ground-breaking RSS reader.

Sounds like a fine browser, but, of course, not the only one. Be sure to check out Maxthon Mobile, the Android version of Maxthon 3, which has more going for it than most of the big-name Windows browsers. Something going for both Maxthon 3 and Maxthon Mobile is that they share a cloud environment. That means that any new, changed, or resorted information about contacts, favorites, notes, passwords or other items made in Maxthon 3 are instantly reflected in Maxthon Mobile. And vice versa. Maxthon Mobile also has the luxury features--multiple tabs, DIY gestures, a wonderfully readable display, a fast, error-correcting downloader, and a ground-breaking RSS reader.

I'm going to cast my vote for Xscope as well for preferred Android browser. It's got the best balance of features and speed out of the many Android web browsers that I've tried over the last couple of years.

My phone is a Samsung Acclaim, very entry-level, so I have to be careful.

Dolphin was unimpressive when I tried it, as was Xscope, but I was new to mobile browsing when I tried them. Dolphin HD (as well as Firefox) is not available on my phone. The limitation is not my Android version (I have 2.2) but rather a limitation imposed via the Market. They do not show up. The only Dolphin I saw was the regular one (now Mini, I suppose).

Opera Mobile is nice, but it has serious rendering issues that may or may not be the fault of my device. It's also huge.

The stock browser is mostly fine for my needs.

I'm trying Miren out now and so far I like it.

I don't even have elaborate needs for a browser. I mainly use it for Wikipedia. Let's face it, none of them are gonna replicate what Firefox will do on a desktop -- I can even do more with IE than a mobile browser. But when I'm away from my desktop, the superior option isn't available. Mostly I prefer apps to a browser -- e.g. Gmail, Google Maps... and TweetDeck for both Twitter and Facebook. (I don't like either of their official apps.) I have an app for IMDb as well, and one for Newegg.com. I wish Ars Technica had an app, but it would have to support the OpenForum as well for me to use it. A quicker solution would be to enable Tapatalk access, but the staff here have unspecified (top secret! LOL) reasons for not using it. (It used to not push ads from a forum to the app, but now it does... so it's not that.)